We Can Leave Here If You Like
by Haunted Cottage
Summary: Whiney kids, squeaky floors and Martha's two cents. Captain Gregg takes her away from it all.
1. Chapter 1

It's cold here, in the wind. Night fog. We can leave if you like. Moral landscapes, coming down as usual to a foreground all agony, pursuant joy, more agony, a lesson insisting hypnotically, grass-like, wave-like, ever on itself— Sea Glass, a poem by Carl Phillips

Cold should be clarifying, Carolyn thought.

Why live in Maine if you can't embrace subfreezing temperatures, perpetual fog, snow, and rain, even - and especially - the inescapable roar of the ocean? She loved everything about her new life in Gull Cottage. This morning, though, the walls closed in all around her as she stuffed an article into a waiting manila envelope.

I should feel clarified, but everything's running together and I can't escape, she thought later, sitting in the brand new station wagon her parents had purchased.

Martha and her two cents everywhere she turned. A yipping little terrier that followed her from room to room. An inconvenient bathroom without a lock. Squeaky wooden floors. Doors that never closed properly. Money problems stalking her dreams.

The continuous, potentially invisible presence of Capt. Daniel Gregg. He claimed to be honorable of course, but who really knew? "He is the house, and the house is him," Claymore had warned. Did he snoop all the time, even watch her as she slept?

A car door slammed loudly. Candy kicked Jonathan and he grabbed her math book. "She's got a note in here from her boyfriend," he announced shrilly, elbowing his sister in the back seat. Carolyn startled, returning unwillingly from daydreams of claustrophobia to the real-time bickering of small children She maneuvered the new Ford out of the car pool line in front of Schooner Bay Elementary. "I do not, I don't pass notes in class. Mother, tell him to shut up. I don't have a boyfriend." Candy's freckles winked at her from the rear-view mirror.

I could have scripted that response, her mother-the-writer thought. "Jonathan, leave Candy alone. Candy, if you're passing notes in school, stop it."

I'm even talking in clichés.

"Mom, one of the kids at school said our house looks just like the one Barnabas Collins lives in," Jonathan opined. Carolyn was annoyed. He knows we're haunted, but he can't say it in front of Candy. "Does not," Candy announced as if on cue. "It's sort of like the Brady Bunch once you get to my bedroom."

They tumbled out of the car, into Martha's waiting apron. "Cookies and milk in the kitchen then upstairs for homework."

Carolyn rested her head on the steering wheel to allay the sudden prickling behind her eyes. Where was the Captain, now that I need him, she thought suddenly, irrationally.

"Madame, we can leave if you like." Like that, he materialized in the front seat. "There's no sense in arguing like querulous adults in the confines of Gull Cottage when the sweeping freedom of the beach beckons."


	2. Chapter 2

"Do I look querulous to you?"

"To me, Madame, to me you are a vision. But if we go inside, you will anger quickly over the stopped-up kitchen sink, the broken washing machine and the fact Jonathan has another F on a Math test. Then I, quite unintentionally, might be forced to render a less-than-endearing although entirely accurate opinion of your inappropriate female response –"

"Well, now I am!" Carolyn gripped the steering wheel, staring straight ahead. "Very querulous, indeed. In fact -- "

"M'dear," the Captain continued suavely, resting his arm behind her seat. "I think we both might benefit from a brief interlude from the chaos imposed by the attitude of your contrarian housekeeper and the needs of your charmingly devious children. If I might suggest, did you know you can steer a straight course straight from here down a little-known back road and onto the little strand of pines directly behind the beach just to our south?"

She shifted slightly in her seat, acutely aware of what appeared to be a flesh-and-blood hand just to the left of her shoulder.

He cocked his chin a notch and the engine sprang , unbidden to life. Carolyn glanced at him. She shifted into gear and gently eased the station wagon down the pothole-ridden path that officially ended Cliff Road. The Captain pointed to a turn barely visible through the pine needles. Seconds later, he cut the engine.

Silence, except for the faint howling sound the wind made as it challenged the puny trees to match the thundering of the stormy gray Atlantic. There wasn't much beach at this point along the shoreline. It's more like a rocky promontory, Carolyn thought. She blushed, as Captain Gregg stared at her intently. A smile tugged at the corner of her lips.

There, just behind the treeline, stood a small cottage that might have appeared forlorn, were it not for the candlelight shining from within.

"Claymore's, I presume?"

"Ours, Madame, for those rare occasions when even the Wheelhouse seems too small."

Or not intimate enough, Carolyn thought, wondering what might happen if she spent too much time alone with the Captain. The idea intrigued her as she removed her shoes to walk through sand and pebbles, shivering in the cold sea air.

Ours, not yours.


	3. Chapter 3

"My dear, you do not care enough for yourself, for your well-being."

He handed her a cup of steaming, mulled wine and gestured to the blankets heaped around the hearth. The fire was warm enough – it was the Captain's gaze that burned right through her.

Carolyn tucked her bare feet beneath one of the blankets and glanced away, taking in the vinyl kitchenette set and the starving artist paintings hanging above the fading sofa at the end of the room.

"I knew Claymore was cheap, but he certainly has not done right by this little summer house."

"Nor you by yourself," Captain Gregg continued, undeterred by her half-hearted feint.

"I cared enough for myself to leave Philadelphia." Enough to let you lead me here, Carolyn thought silently, defensively.

The fire crackled and sparked as the wind rose outside. The candles flickered. There were goose bumps suddenly, on her arms.

"I feel it too, Madame." The draft? Surely, that's what he means.

Carolyn rubbed her arms briskly, arguing her unspoken point. Capt. Gregg raised his eyebrows in response.

"In my limited experience, m'dear, what's important is not what's said between two people that matters, it's the connection behind the words."

Startled, she raised her eyes to his impossibly impenetrable blue ones and saw, for the first time, the man waiting patiently within.

She reached out her hand, impulsively – for his.


	4. Chapter 4

She felt nothing more than the eiderdown quilt beneath as her hand sliced immediately through what otherwise appeared to be the very much alive if weatherworn fingers of an intensely attractive seaman.

"Disappointed, m'dear?" His eyes never left hers, as they traveled slowly back up his arm but not as far as his face. Mine is burning, Carolyn thought as her color rose. She stared desperately at the fire blazing just over his shoulder.

"This is what you are, not who you are." She looked at him, finally and fully, her chin lifting. "I'm not sure why I did that. I'm sorry. I had –"

"Every right," the Captain said thoughtfully. "I suppose –"

"No, you don't. Suppose anything, I mean. I don't want to go back to Gull Cottage, I don't want to leave here, what we have right now that is ours, alone." She felt her voice waver, then catch. "Do you think I'm such a flippant female that your corporeality matters one whit to our relationship?"

"If I might, Madame! Belay that bickering."

At least that's what Carolyn thought she heard as she stared, hopelessly enamored, at the bearded mouth now inches from hers.

"If I might, Captain!" she continued softly. "You are a man. A ghost perhaps, but here, in this cottage pummeled by the sea, whipped by the wind and diminished by the paucity of Claymore's decorating budget, I can think of nothing more delightful than being haunted by your most earthly presence."

Words spent, she drank deeply, for the first time, the fragrant wine she knew he'd gone to quite some trouble to prepare. Everything about this foray from Gull Cottage was premeditated, she realized, wondering how he knew her so well after so few months.

The connection, behind the words, as he phrased it, felt strange to her. His knowledge of and anticipation of her feelings and needs was far more alien to her than his otherworldliness.


	5. Chapter 5

And he smiled, unabashedly, unreservedly. No pompous head lift or cocked eyebrow to contextualize or frame his reaction. White teeth emerging from beneath those inviting lips.

"Pummeled by the sea, whipped by the wind and diminished by Claymore? A very tall order for our Gull Cottage getaway!"

Puzzled by her vehemence, Carolyn forgot about her dead husband, parents and in-laws. Pummeling was behind her. She was here, with Captain Gregg, who was making it abundantly clear she had nothing to defend.

This is what happens if you spend too much time alone with Daniel Gregg. The past vaporizes into the moment, and only in the moment can anyone – spectral or corporeal – become truly alive.

"Madame, if I may resume my supposing –"

She nodded shyly. His gaze was so intense it made direct eye contact almost painful.

"It is my deepest wish that what little time we are afforded ourselves more than compensate for times you are locked within my ship by the elements, forced to endure the petty squabbling of dog, housekeeper and offspring!"

"Why Captain, who's the poet now?"

She regretted the words as soon as she uttered them. Trite. Cliched. Like a carpool conversation with a fifth-grader.

"I meant . . ."

Take me back into the moment, she pleaded with her eyes. This exact second, and nothing more.

Quiescient, he reached for her hand.

In the moment, it was warm and pliant. The kiss bespoke a lifetime of presence.

This clarifies everything, she thought before she closed her eyes finally, opening fully to the Captain. Ever on myself.


End file.
